If the sun is at it’s relative peak at noon, why does it take so much longer to set than it does to rise for at least half of the year?

Question

The closer you are to the date of the summer solstice, it seems to gradually take up to 10 hours for the sun to set. Yet, the sun doesn’t begin to rise at 2am. Why is that?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

“Noon” is just a number on a particular moment. The Sun and the rest of astronomy doesn’t care about it.

[Here’s a table of sunrise and sunset times in Chicago.](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/chicago). On September 1st, there were 13 hours and 6 minutes of daylight. The sun rose at 6:16 AM and set at 7:17 PM. You’ll note that’s an hour more afternoon.

“Solar Noon” is when the sun was ACTUALLY at its highest point. That was at 12:50 PM. So if you’d have observed the sun at noon on September 1st in Chicago, you’d have noticed it was *not quite* at its peak yet. You’d have to wait about an hour.

All of these things combine to mean we quite often have more daylight after noon than before. SOME of this is because of daylight savings. But since almost every day of the year is more or less than 12 hours, it’s pretty rare that the “noon” on our 24-hour system lines up perfectly with solar noon.